TechnoMage

It’s entirely possible that I am playing Too Much Spore(tm), but I had to share this with y’all…

It’s for spreading LOVE!

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EOT

Wow… Thanks so much to everyone that came along on Friday evening to the Private View. I had a great time, saw lots of people that I was not expecting and generally had a great time. I had a real sense of pride and gratitude that I have these wonderful people in my life, who all came together to experience my work, talk about it and have a few drinks together. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel right now.

Saturday was quiet, but lovely. I had some people who were just walking by, and some people who made a special trip, including one of the senior Application Engineers where I am working, a former colleague from SpinVox and a couple from my local friends who were not able to come on Friday night.

Shortly I am heading out to see if anyone comes by today; more to follow…

Yesterday there was an article in the Reading Chronicle about my exhibition. Thanks are due to for transcribing it from the paper; here is the text:

Photographer records the year with portfolio of 366 pictures

A photographer with plenty of focus is staging a unique exhibition of the 366 people who occupied a year of his life.

Oliver Godby, of Kennet Walk, is presenting 366 portraits- one taken every day for a year, of friends, family, and chance encounters with strangers.

The project, which is free to view, will be displayed at Blake’s Lock Museum, on the River Kennet from September 13-18.

The 33-year-old said: “My aim was to take an interesting photo of someone I knew or met before midnight every day for a whole year to create a portfolio which would be as much about my life as those I photographed.

“The original challenge was to find 365 ways of taking someone’s portrait that would give some insight into their character and be an interesting photograph.”

The artist and freelance computer programmer started the project on May 10, 2007 on his 32nd birthday and then realised that 2008 is a leap year and he needed an extra picture on February 29.

The pictures feature subjects ranging from babies to pensioners, photographed in Britain and abroad.

Oliver’s love of photography stems from an old school friend, and from his father Clifford Godby, who is still a keen photographer today.

He said “I am interested is all areas of photography, but my primary focus has always been taking pictures of people. I enjoy event photography of all kinds, weddings, parties, gigs as well as fashion and fine art.

“My hope is to advance my art by taking photographs as often as I can, and one day to make my living doing what I love.”

He hopes to present his exhibition in other places in the UK, and to produce a book, based on the stories of his subjects.

Oliver added: “I am hoping that this exhibition will stimulate people to think about the people they meet every day, and to consider taking special portraits of their friends and family”

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Last night and tonight, thanks to the help of some friends who have been more than generous with their time and support, I have hung the show, and now I can say that tomorrow evening I will be opening my first exhibition, and I am so proud, thankful, excited, scared and wired.

A whole year of my life is hanging on those walls… Seems like only yesterday that Heppie and I were joking together about how mad one would have to be to attempt to take a portrait of a different person every day for a year.

I look forward to seeing those of you who can make it, we will think of and toast those of you that can’t, and I will let you all know how it all goes.

Night night all

Hello again all, more exhibiton news…

Last night jfs created an absolutely killer poster for my show - I cannot tell you how blown away I am by this, it’s just so cool

Anyway, if anyone reading this is in a position to put it up at work, or you just want a sneak preview of the poster, then please feel free to download and print this:

Poster - Click Here to Download 

Thanks for your help if you print it and put it up - just so you know it’s colour, A3…

TTFN

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EOF

Hello all…

I don’t know if anyone on my friends list is a journalist, or knows one, and even then the story is really only local interest in the first instance, but with my upcoming exhibition I am feeling the need to drum up some PR…

I have already sent a press release to all 3 local radio stations and both local newspapers in Reading, plus to Amateur Photographer, but I would like to cast the net wider if I can

As such, could you just have a quick think as to whether or not you know someone in the media that you could schill this to, or even someone who might know someone - you know?

The ACTUAL Press Release is here:

http://www.techno-mage.co.uk/wp_docs/PressRelease_365Portraits_OliverGodby.pdf

The information about the show and the project can be found at this link:

http://www.techno-mage.co.uk/blog/365-portraits/

The Photos themselves are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oliver_godby/sets/72157600200897004/

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give…

..::EDIT::.. Can anyone on here help me with creating a poster for the show..? I am crap at these things and could really do with input from someone who is good at this kind of thing…

So I’ve been thinking about my career, and my future; dangerous waters for sure… The thing is that I love programming, but more and more I am finding myself to be restricted by the kind of work I can get, in short I tend to find that there is too much ‘fix it, fix it now!’ and not enough thoughtful, well designed and planned and innovative development going on to really hold my interest and allow me to get the creative / intellectual buzz out of my work. Frankly, in the long term, if I am going to stay in programming, I think that I am going to have to evolve my skillset away from purely web-based technologies, if only to give me the opportunity to pick the most interesting work I can get instead of the most interesting web-based work I can get.

I am really enjoying the freedom and flexibility of contracting - don’t believe the hype about the money; it was great in the 90’s, but unless you are prepared to fly a lot closer to the grey areas of the tax rules than I am comfortable with it is not all that much better than appropriately compensated permanent work these days. Still the freedom and flexibility is well worth the extra hassle and uncertainty, so I’d like to carry on being a freelancer / contractor whatever I end up doing.

It has also occured to me that I like and am interested in server / systems admin, particularly on the UNIX / Linux side of things, and that I already have __some__ skills in that area.

So here’s the rub… I have some periods on my CV that I can legitimately claim as times in which my job has genuinely required me to act for a portion of my working time as a UNIX sysadmin. I have some skills in that area and would certainly not be over-selling myself to describe myself as a “power user” in UNIX-like environments, i.e. I LIKE the command line, I use grep, sed, vi, perl, regular expressions and many other tools that characterise the sysadmin, box-pilot, code-monkey trope. I also love servers - I know this is a little weird, but if I had the money I would have a small rack of server appliances in my home, just to play with; I love the kit, I love what they can do for me if used correctly and the soft hum of server fans and the blinking of (preferably blue) LEDs is very attractive to me. I am a geek; there I said it, I feel better. Bearing all of this in mind, I think that I might like to move into doing contract-based sysadmin work, specifically providing short-term relief for key server support staff on long-term sick, or maternity leave or who simply leave a company ‘in the lurch’ by changin jobs unexpectedly and leaving a resource gap. The problem is that I am not sure of three factors:

1. How to shore-up (or is that sure-up?) my skills… Should I look into certification? Should I look for lower paying ‘doing my time’ work? Are there steps that I absolutely should take?

2. Where to look for short-term / freelance / contract sysadmin work.

3. Is all of the work in this field going to come with an on-call burden, or is there the potential to escape that?

Your thoughts, friends, would as ever be very helpful to me…

TTFN

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EOT

OK, there has not been a lot of communication from me on this subject for a while and I realise that we are now getting into the realms of short-notice, but I can now announce with final and complete certainty (well almost, more on that later) that the exhibition of my project “365 Portraits” will run from 12/09/2008 to 18/09/2008 in The Turbine House Exhibition Gallery at The Blake’s Lock Museum in Reading.

If you can see this, then you are warmly invited to attend the ‘Private View’ on Friday 12th of September, starting at 1900h.

There have been some roadblocks along the way, including the prohibitive cost of having the collection printed, but this is by no means designed to be a sob-story, and the important fact is that the mountain has been almost completely conquered and the show will go on.

There are two remaining details to deal with between now and the 10th (when I get the keys):

1. I am still in need of a volunteer or two who are prepared to be anything from bored out of their minds to engaged in deep discussions with interested members of the public, for either / both of Tuesday and Thursday the 16th and 18th. Basically to get the space, it must be ‘open’ from at least 1030h to 1830h during the entirety of the exhibition and I have to go to work… I will be keeping the exhibition open under my own steam on the evenings, and the weekend, but I need some people who need to ring-fence some quality reading time, but who are comfortable dealing with the public if necessary. Any offers greatly received, please email me at - maleghast at gmail dot com.

2. I need to provide my own Pulic Liability Insurance for the duration of the exhibition or Reading Borough Council will not let me have the space. It may be that I just have a butchers on the internet and buy what I can get / afford and be done with it, but if anyone out there has experience with arranging / sourcing / buying short-term event insurance of this type, or even of any type and particularly if they can recommend a good, cheap broker, then I would be in your debt.

I hope that some / many / all of the people who can see this, plus their significant others (if for some reason I can’t reach them) will come and see the show - a lot of the people who will see this blog-post are in the show. I hope some of you will be able to make it on the Friday evening, where there will indeed be ‘pie and punch’, or perhaps something a little more sophisticated. Anyone who can hook me up with cheap wine that is actually drinkable, and / or good nibbles may well get a copy of their picture presented to them (though not the show copy, as I hope to re-exhibit later this year / early next).

Those of you who can see this who blog in other scenes / environments / areas or just have different audiences to me who are prepared to do their bit passing on the details, you are forever in my debt and you are also shiny, special people. So that you can spread the word, here are some details:

Blakes Lock Museum

Dates: 12/09 -> 18/09 2008 | 1030h to 2130h

The Project on Flickr

There will also be a ‘Page’ on my Wordpress Blog with these details, but it’s not ready yet - I will send another Ping around when that’s live.

Thanks in advance to any and all that talk / blog about this for me
Finally… I am going to say this up-front so that it’s not a shock to anyone, and also to make it as clear as I can to the people most important to me that I have no expectations on this front;

This endeavour is costing me (conservatively) about £1k. Now, that is my choice and I’m not asking anyone to either praise my commitment, or mock my lunacy, I wanted to do this, this is the best way to make sure that it’s my show, my vision, my achievement. Nonetheless there will be a donations box at the show, and rather like the money you may (or may not) spend on a piece of good shareware software, or the tip you leave after a good meal, if you enjoy the show, then please think about leaving a donation. I do not expect to even get close to recouping costs, but if I do, the balance of any further donations will go to charity, I have honestly not decided which one yet. Please feel free to give me some ideas…

There will also be the chance to buy either an ‘official’ / licenced digital copy of the picture or pictures that you like, or to order paper or canvas prints. Again, I do not expect this of people, but I want it to be possible, and I want to be transparent about the fact that there will be a mark-up on printing, so if you want to get the best deal, then I would think about the digital route and doing your own printing - there is simply no way for me to get it any cheaper than you can. For Reading locals I will be recommending a local tradesman, who appears as one of the portraits in the show. He is an excellent printer and framer and his prices are very good considering the qualilty of what he turns out. There will be more details on his services in the show literature (must get to Kinko’s this weekend)…

Okay, that’s it for now - I look forward to seeing as many of you as I am lucky enough to get on the 12th; thanks fo reading…